In recent years, the ability to acquire spectral information for a field of view has become desirable in numerous applications. Such information can include a complete spectrum or just some spectral information at every location in an image plane. As such, spectral image sensors must be capable of obtaining a large amount of spatial information across a multitude of wavelengths in a field of view (“spatio-spectral information”).
The acquisition of spatio-spectral information on its own, however, may be insufficient for certain applications. In particular, surface depth information may be desirable in addition to spectral information in order to recreate images in three spatial directions. Traditional spectral imaging sensing techniques have not been employed to collect surface depth information in addition to spectral information. Accordingly, improved spectral image sensors and spectral image sensing techniques are desired.